Notebook

Couper Moorhead

The Miami HEAT are 2-1 with an Offensive Rating of 115.8, Defensive Rating of 105.5 and Net Rating of +10.3, No. 3 in the NBA. Here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing about the first week of the season.

IT’S A DIFFERENT OFFENSE…IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT

Preseason numbers are always one thing. Sometimes they lie, sometimes they don’t. The regular season tells you the truth.

Under normal circumstances, we would wait a couple weeks for numbers and the schedule to normalize to start leaning one way or another on what is or isn’t sustainable. And as far as Miami’s efficiency numbers, that remains true.

But even though the HEAT have only played three games, we’ve already seen more than enough to tell you that the changes Erik Spoelstra has made to the offense are real, and they’re spectacular – from a certain point of view.

What we aren’t saying is that Miami is the best offense in the league. We haven’t even seen enough to say they’ll be a Top 10 offense, or that we even know for sure how much more effective this will all be compared to the last few seasons. That much, we need time for.

What this is is different. So different that anyone familiar with the HEAT’s typical offensive stylings is probably dealing with a little whiplash from all the double takes they’re doing making sure that they’re watching the right team. It’s fast, no doubt. Miami is leading the league in pace at 109.6 possessions per game, and though that number is likely inflated a little by a high steal rate but you don’t increase your pace by double-digit possessions with a couple more steals per game. They’re getting the ball over halfcourt quicker, shooting earlier in the shot clock and the pace is sustaining through all four quarters.

That speed will get much of the attention as it’s the biggest, most in your face adjustment. That’s natural when a team goes from No. 26 to No. 1 in transition opportunities (so far). The story with the longer tail as far as evolving throughout the season will be how Miami is running their offense.

Read-and-react is one thing. The HEAT have always had a read-and-react element to their offense. It’s one thing to have read-and-react elements, though, and another to have nearly the entire offense be based on that concept, on instinctual, moment-to-moment decisions. Of course it’s not actually the entire offense, but as close as the HEAT, and probably most other teams, have come. That’s how you end up with games like the win over New York where, as Bam Adebayo put it, “I don’t think we ran a play today”.

Consider, for instance, that Miami is only running 22 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions through three games. Entering this season, the lowest mark of the past 13 years – as far back as we have player-tracking data – was the 2018-19 Philadelphia 76ers at 39.3. For the most part, with a nod to dribble handoffs which Miami has also largely put to the side, this has been a pick-and-roll league. Without that bread-and-butter staple, there is an adjustment process.

“At first it’s definitely weird,” Dru Smith said. “You just get in such a rhythm of doing that that early on, especially in camp, where you get stuck and you’re looking at each other like, ‘What do we do now?’”

They’ve all seemingly caught on rather quickly for such a drastic change, a sign that there was no time wasted in training camp and preseason. Even as the team lost all of its preseason games, there were signs that the process behind the touch-and-go results was healthy and developing. It helps when you have players like Norm Powell, one of the best catch-and-choose players in the league, his quick decisions knifing through defenses, or getting defenders on their heels and into foul-prone positions, or someone like Bam Adebayo, for years a major component of Miami’s pick-and-roll and handoff game, showing early willingness to changing from what has benefitted him in the past.

“We’re all bought into the system,” Adebayo said. “You see it. You don’t know who is going to shoot the ball or who is going to catch-and-go. That’s how we like it, that’s how we want to play. We want all five guys to be involved.”

When it looks good, it’s a beautiful thing to watch regardless of whether or not the open look goes in.

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Notebook 98: No Pick Offensive Flow

It is, of course, early. This is all such a departure from not only how the HEAT have operated, but from how most teams operate, that we have likely barely begun to see how teams will adjust once they have time to go through film and adjust. Tyler Herro, the highest-usage pick-and-roll player on the team, will be incorporated. The Knicks and Magic, both teams with bigger wings that can stop the dribble-drive attacks and, essentially, well-spaced isolations, were able to jam up Miami’s flow a bit. Teams were able to get more organized in transition and muck up all those clean hit-aheads the fast-break game has thrived on so far. It all looked mostly how it was supposed to look when New York made things difficult, and Miami will get better, too, but this is something that needs to work in April and May as much as it works in October. You can’t always play fast, but you can strive for quickness.

“Sometimes you’re not going to have an absolute flow in the last eight seconds, that’s not necessarily realistic,” Spoelstra said. “But your spacing better be dialed in and your decisions on the catch have to be precise. You can’t miss moments, particularly at the end of possessions.”

What this most definitely is, however, is fun. That much is undeniable. And for as much as we talk in wins and losses, in efficiencies and low-hanging fruit and optimization, fun most definitely matters.

It’s been a nice start to the season after a nice preseason for Jaquez Jr. as he’s shooting over 70 percent from the floor with the vast majority of his shots coming within 10 feet of the rim. Since he entered the league the paint has been Jaquez Jr.’s best friend and so far he’s finishing his non-rim attempts more like his rookie season than last year (his rim efficiency was nearly identical in his first two years).

Spoelstra is deploying Jaquez Jr. differently, too. Even when he’s ostensibly playing the three or four spots depending on Miami’s lineup configurations, Jaquez Jr. is often playing the nominal point guard, bringing the ball up around 21 times per game. Davion Mitchell, actually starting at point guard, is bringing it up 29 times per game. Bam Adebayo, Andrew Wiggins, Norm Powell and Andrew Wiggins combine to move the ball across halfcourt about 18 times per game. Nikola Jovic does so around nine times. Last year Tyler Herro brought the ball up 22 times a night.

In other words, outside of the team’s actual starting point guard nobody is bringing the ball up more often than Jaquez Jr. and it’s not particularly close.

“Anything that gets him downhill and gets him aggressive fits him,” Spoelstra said. We just had to really clean up the spacing and the decision making to simplify things for him. Now, just let him loose.”

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Notebook 98: Jaime First Option Bring Up

As a result, Jaquez Jr. is throwing a career-high 63 passes per 100 possessions, but what he isn’t doing is run much in the way of traditional offense, which makes sense because as noted above Miami isn’t running much traditional offense as a team. It isn’t bring the ball up and immediately get into a pick-and-roll, it’s push the ball up, look for a quick-hit attack route or a cross-matched defender Jaquez Jr. can go at – his isolations have nearly doubled year-over-year – and if it isn’t there then get off the ball.

“My No. 1 read is always the throw-behind guy,” Jaquez Jr. said. “Get into the paint, turn around, there should always be someone there as my outlet. That’s the simplest read. You got the dribble through for the corner. What we’re trying to get more of, what I’m trying to tell the guys, is to cut. Once I get onto that block, that fill behind guy but we also need that cut as well. We’re still working on getting that guy going. We’re still working on some of those reads but read No. 1 is attack the basket.”

The jumper volume is on the very low end at the moment. We’ll see if that changes, or even if it has to change. For the moment, putting the ball in the hands of a player who has been given a cushion at the arc counteracts that coverage through the earlier stages of possessions. And with Miami’s possessions as short as ever, there isn’t as much time for defenses to muck up the spacing. How that will change when Herro returns and the ball is distributed differently, we’ll see when we get there – especially if Mitchell is then coming off the bench. For the time being, Jaquez Jr. has found a role with some traction, one that has him as an NBA best plus-60 when on the floor, which is already an upgrade from his sophomore year.

-Even though the Knicks put up 54 threes, shooting 27.8 percent, Miami had the better Shot Quality in that game with an expected effective field-goal percentage of 54.5 to New York’s 52.7. That said, Spoelstra noted he doesn’t necessarily want to be giving up that many deep attempts.

“They had some open ones that they missed,” Spoelstra said. “Especially some of those after offensive rebounds, some of the pick-and-flares. It is a different league, I would like to not have a habit of giving up 50 every single night, just the law of averages. It’s more about being up and into them and being there on the catch, forcing some other decisions with multiple efforts.”

-A part of Miami’s offense that is worth keeping a close eye on is that their isolations have spiked to 28.6 per 100 possessions so far. They’re different isolations than the more deliberate, matchup-hunting variety that we’ve seen in the past, more quick-hitter attacks with the strong side of the floor cleared out, but they are isolations nevertheless. A dribble-drive offense relies, inherently, on players being able to drive past their defenders with the dribble, though the timing and movement of the offense is of course operating to help those attempts start with an advantage against.

-Rebounding has been brought up often by Spoelstra often over the past month, and through three games is defensive rebounding at a rate that would have been Top 10 last year.

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Coup’s Notebook Vol. 98: Erik Spoelstra’s New Offense Is More Different Than You Think, Jaime Jaquez Jr. Is Back On Track In A New Role And More From The First Week

The Miami HEAT finished preseason 0-6 and have made their roster cuts in preparation for the regular season. Things kick off Wednesday at Orlando. In the meantime, here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.

The Miami HEAT did not run their regular offense this preseason.

Not that we know exactly what their offense is going to be beyond the fact that they’ve been focused on increasing their pace of play, both in terms of upping their transition opportunities and how quickly they run their offense, but we can fairly guess that the shape of their attack won’t be what it has been the past six games.

“We’re just getting up the court right now,” Bam Adebayo says. “We’re worried about pace. That’s been our No. 1 change this year.”

What are we talking about? Miami finished No. 28 in preseason when it comes to pick-and-rolls used per 100 possessions, at 24.4. No. 27 is Utah, and they’re all the way up at 37.3 pick-and-rolls per 100. There are no teams No. 29 or No. 30 because not all preseason games have happened in arenas with player tracking cameras. Last season Miami finished No. 9, using 69 per 100. No team used fewer than 40.

They also finished No. 28 this preseason when it comes to handoff usage, down from 22.6 last regular season to 10.7 per 100.

No, we can’t ignore that Miami had an Offensive Rating of 102.6 in preseason – 106.2 in first halves when more regular have been playing, which was No. 24 in the league – or that their three-point volume (28.7 attempts per 100) was the lowest among all teams that have made a preseason appearance. It might mean something, it might not, either way it’s a tiny sample size with half of the rotation in and out of games. We just have to consider that the HEAT have done all this while eschewing the bread-and-butter actions used by them and most every other NBA team.

Which is, of course, intentional, with the focus elsewhere during preseason.

“We’ll get some more dead ball sets,” Erik Spoelstra said. “We’ve already been installing some of those. But I doubt we’ll be leading the league in pick-and-rolls based on our roster. We’ll see where it ultimately lands, but yeah I wanted to look at some things as far as our attacks. Those went up, paint opportunities went up.”

To Spoelstra’s point, the HEAT also led the league in preseason drives at 56.9 per 100. They produced less than a point per possession on those drives, which they’ll want to improve on, but preseason is about establishing a process before you can worry about the results and the system in place – all about pushing the pace and making quick decisions off the catch with precise spacing around the ball – produced the profile Spoelstra appears to have intended. The HEAT took the fourth most shots in the paint – No. 15 when it comes to rim-only attempts – and again while the efficiency wasn’t where they’ll want it, those are the opportunities they were seeking.

It should be said that none of this guarantees an offensive boost out of the bottom third in the league. That’s the goal, but for now Spoelstra can only build what he sees as the best offense for the talent on the roster. To use Norm Powell as an example, he’s one of the best catch-and-attack players in the league. You can run him around screens off the ball and if he has a sliver of a window he’ll make the right read whether to drive or shoot ƒar more often than not. Asking him to run 40-plus pick-and-rolls a game, which he hasn’t done before, wouldn’t be playing to his strengths. When Tyler Herro, far more of a pick-and-roll ballhandler, returns, he’ll likely be given different looks.

“What I ultimately want is high efficiency plays for our team,” Spoelstra says. “And then when you start to dial in to individual guys, what makes the most sense that’ll bring the most efficiency out of a player.”

We’ll dive into this again after a handful of regular season games. For now, it’s wait and see. But we could be entering the season of Random Offense.

“It’s an adjustment, but it’s honestly better for us because you can’t really scout and figure out who is bringing the ball up,” Powell said. “We’re playing in a lot of random, open offense, reading defenses and seeing what they’re giving us rather than having a set play.

“With this offense is keeps defenses off balance because they don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Miami announced a series of roster moves, as expected, following their preseason finale against Memphis on Friday. First up was the release of former HEAT first-round pick Precious Achiuwa, who was on a non-guaranteed deal.

“It is tough,” Spoelstra said. “Especially because we spent time with him four years ago. It felt like we wanted to keep that going, same thing right now. But that’s just where we are right now with the roster. We’ll see what happens in the future.”

The HEAT also waived Dain Dainja, Bez Mbeng and Ethan Thompson. As with Trevor Keels and Gabe Madsen, you shouldn’t be surprised in the least to see those names pop up on the roster for the Sioux Falls Skyforce. Meanwhile, both Myron Gardner – Gardner said he wasn’t happy with his preseason performance, though his agent had told him that the team felt good about things – and Vlad Goldin remained on their two-way deals, though those spots are hardly guaranteed moving forward.

“That’s the life right now for those kind of guys,” Spoelstra said. “You can’t ever let up. Yes, you’re on the two-way right now but league wide you can’t say those are in cement. That’s just the reality. We’re not trying to be harsh about it. Not trying to not have empathy about being in that situation, but this is the life of players trying to make it.”

Jahmir Young was rewarded with Miami’s third and final two-way slot after a preseason where he scored nine points a game on 56.9 percent true-shooting. Young went out with his agent for dinner after Friday’s game where he was given the news, and Young said he immediately called his mom to tell her.

“He’s got a good way about him,” Spoelstra said. “He’s an experienced player, he knows what his game is. But that speed and quickness with the ball, ability to get into the paint, ability to knock down threes. It was unique. He had a really good year last year. And then in practice when we had him in that third unit, drilling against him and kind of letting him to his thing, he’s a tough guy to corral.”

The roster is never set in stone, not with non-guaranteed deals involved, but this will be the group for the time being. Miami does have an open spot on the main roster should they want to sign a player down the line.

We won’t rehash all of Erik Spoelstra’s press conference as he was announced USA Men’s Basketball head coach. You can watch the entire thing here on YouTube.

This does, however, give us another good opportunity to look at where Spoelstra sits, historically speaking. Soon to turn 55, Spoelstra already ranks No. 17 in all-time wins at 787 and No. 5 in all-time postseason victories with 110. He’s won six conference championships and two titles, and has a gold medal from the Paris Olympics with another possible one coming in 2028.

And of course he was named one of the 15 greatest coaches in league history by the league a few years back. That’s an entire resume in itself.

When the HEAT made their surprising run to the Finals in the 2020 Bubble, we mentioned on social that he was already close to being a lock for the Hall of Fame. That drew some public pushback at the time. We highly doubt anyone would argue with him being a stone-cold lock now. It’s not about whether Spoelstra is a Hall of Fame coach or not anymore, it’s where he ranks among all of the league’s all-time great coaches. And that is a conversation better saved for later.

-The HEAT finished No. 8 in preseason in pace at 106.1 possessions per game, with that number rising a bit to a pace of 108.0 possessions when looking at only their first halves.

-Similarly, Miami was No. 25 in assists percentage – the percent of their made shots that were assisted – but they jumped up to No. 15 in first halves.

-The HEAT finished No. 29 in Defensive Rebounding percentage during preseason. While often a topic of conversation over the years, this has typically been a non-issue when Bam Adebayo has been available.

-Miami did finish with a Top 10 free-throw rate in preseason after finishing No. 25 in that category last year, which could be seen as a result of their increased drives though with the grain of salt that preseason officiating is another factor that can change a bit in the regular season, or even simply over a larger sample size of games.

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Coup’s Notebook Vol. 97: Early Returns On Miami’s New-Look Offense As The Roster Takes Shape

The Miami HEAT are 0-3 in preseason, though they have a positive +3.7 Net Rating in first halves when their rotation players have mostly played, with three more to play before the real games begin. Here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing so far.

Nikola Jovic scored three points on 1-of-3 shooting in Wednesday’s loss to San Antonio, adding on three rebounds and three assists.

You probably saw that, after Jovic put up nine points, eight rebounds and seven assists against Milwaukee two days prior, and thought there was a steep drop-off. Sure, we aren’t going to say the two games were apples-to-apples, but we are going to say that we aren’t particularly concerned with the numbers in the same way we aren’t concerned with Miami’s preseason record or with Bam Adebayo scoring seven points a game so far.

What we are concerned with is the way Jovic is playing, and how that style is fitting so well within the up-tempo system Erik Spoelstra is trying to implement as the teams seeks to maximize the youth and speed of the roster.

We spent plenty of time discussing how Jovic can impact that speed this week in After The Buzzer, so we won’t reiterate the same points beyond noting how intentional Jovic has been in pushing the ball up the floor after opponent misses. If Miami wants to play as quick as everyone says they do, having two rebounders capable of turning a miss the other way and making aggressive passers in Jovic and Adebayo makes plenty of sense for the starting lineup.

But Jovic can also significantly affect the halfcourt game, as well. We’ve said it dozens of time and we’ll probably say it a dozen more, but the key to this team finding another level on offense is not just pace, but playmaking – getting the ball to high-value zones and high-value shots before the defense can react. Even in a less impressive game on Wednesday, Jovic still hit the weakside with two passes that were exactly the sort of passes the Cleveland Cavaliers were daring this team to make in the playoffs last year as they flooded the strong side of the floor.

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Notebook 96: Jovic Preseason Passes

Those are the passes that break a defense and unlock an offense, especially if they can come regularly enough without a significant increase in turnovers. Everyone on the floor gets better alongside players who can make these passes, and most rosters are lucky if they have more than a couple guys capable of them.

Jovic has started three preseason games now and the momentum seems to be headed in the direction of him pairing with Adebayo early in the season. Of course Jovic still has to play well, shoot well, defend well, rebound well, all of that. But the version of him that is doing all of that, that is earning his minutes, is a player who raises the ceiling of what the HEAT can be when they have the ball.

Speaking to pace more broadly, it would be instructive for us to look back at where Miami was in terms of preseason pace in previous seasons. We’re pulling only first-half numbers in these games to focus in on minutes where the primary rotation players would have been in the game, which means it’s also worth keeping in mind that the sample size shrinks accordingly.

Preseason Possessions Per Game First Half

So, keeping in mind that pace is always up across the league in preseason and thus always drops once the real games start, Miami is currently, through three games, playing at their fastest preseason pace in about a decade.

There are, of course, more ways to measure pace than just raw possessions – that will likely not be Spoelstra’s primary benchmark as far as evaluating the team’s progress.

“It’s not all about the pace metric by itself,” Spoelstra said. “It’s about how fast you do things. It can be in the halfcourt as well. How fast can you get to a screen, how fast can you get to the rim, how fast can you cut to create an advantage for somebody else. That all falls into our category of pace.”

We only have preseason tracking data for the past three seasons, but here’s where the HEAT are in terms of the average time it takes them to cross halfcourt…

And their average possession length in those three seasons…

On the other that of that time continuum, Miami has averaged just 6.5 first-half possessions per game in the preseason where they shoot with less than five seconds on the clock (13.6 last year). Last regular season, they averaged 13.1, eighth most in the league.Nothing wrong with being skeptical about all of this. A coach preaching pace in the preseason is about as common as a player saying they added 15 pounds of muscle in the offseason. Running, and playing fast in the halfcourt, also doesn’t make you efficient on its own, and Miami’s Offensive Rating in the three first halves so far is just 102.5 even with slightly above-average three-point shooting.

Again, these are tiny sample sizes that we’re using because it’s all we have at the moment. For now, let’s just say that everything is at least pointed in the right direction when it comes to the point of emphasis out of training camp. We’ll see where it all goes.

You can’t ask for much more in a preseason debut from a young point guard than what Kasparas Jakucionis did Wednesday evening offering up eight points and double-digit assists.

Jakucionis has most of the passes in his toolkit already, so it wasn’t that surprising that he was setting his teammates up with precision and accuracy. What was a little surprising was just how much of his work benefitted Kel’el Ware almost immediately, with six of his assists going Ware’s way, including a lob in the pick-and-roll, and drive and dump-off for a hook shot and an early pocket pass into a push shot that Spoelstra mentioned multiple times in the days following.

But the pass that stuck out, one which Spoelstra also pointed out specifically for Jakucionis’ passing vision, wasn’t one that necessarily came within an action or the flow of the game. It was when Jakucionis got stuck without his dribble along the baseline and decided to create a passing lane where not every player would see one.

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Notebook 96: Jakucionis Toss Up Ware

Many players hit Pelle Larsson as he curled around the top of the arc for a late-clock three, but that’s what separates players who are in, or could be in in this case, those upper tiers of playmaking.

“He’s courageous enough to try and make the play,” Spoelstra says. “He has the vision and he’s willing to try to make it.”

We won’t go too much into Jakucionis right now. It’s very, very early and the difference between preseason minutes against third and fourth stringers and the regular season is vast. He’ll still have to earn his rotation minutes, same as any rookie. We’ve been on record since he was drafted in saying that his playmaking has the potential to, eventually, be transformational for the HEAT. In the meantime, just let him be him and let’s see exactly who that is in an NBA context.

“It’s more encouraging right now,” Spoelstra said of his coaching approach with Jakucionis, “and then we’ll feel out some kind of tendencies, if they are tendencies, on turnovers. You can see the pace, playing with speed, with skill level, it fits him better than what was happening in Summer League. We’ll lean into that. We don’t want to give him too much right now. One of his strengths is playing off his instincts.”

It is worth noting, however, that is Jovic does end up starting with Ware coming off the bench, that could be a bit of a blessing in disguise if Jakucionis does earn himself some of those bench minutes. Even without much experience together, you put a playmaker like the point guard and a target man like Ware on the floor together, clearly good things are going to happen.

“It’s more a product of Kel’el’s great hands, he’s a vertical threat, Kas sees it and can deliver it,” Spoelstra said.

-Both Goran Dragic and Aleksander Barkov were seen at training camp at Florida Atlantic University last week. Udonis Haslem was also there as a participant each day, helping the team go through drills.

-In the annual GM Survey conducted by NBA.com’s John Schumann, Jakucionis was voted the rookie who was the biggest steal for where he was taken in the draft with 17 percent of the vote.

-In that same survey, Erik Spoelstra took the top spot with 52 percent of the vote for who is considered the best coach in the league, along with the most votes for the coach who is the best manager/motivator of people with 28 percent of that vote.

-Chris Quinn finished tied for fourth with seven percent of the vote for best assistant coach in the league.

-Per 100 possessions, the HEAT are taking 37.2 threes in three games, No. 33 among all team (including international opponents) that have appeared in the preseason. They’ve been without many of their guards and wings for these games so there may be nothing there, but three-point volume is always worth monitoring early in the year.

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Coup’s Notebook Vol. 96: Nikola Jovic Is About More Than Numbers, Miami's New Offense Is Running On Schedule And Kasparas Jakucionis Finds Early Chemstry With Kel'el Ware

The Miami HEAT are in the middle of their Summer League slate, about to wrap up their stint at the California Classic in San Francisco before heading to Las Vegas. Here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing so far.

The first is that Duncan Robinson has been traded to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Simone Fontecchio, a sign-and-trade move after Robinson used the early termination option on his deal.

Robinson, one of the longest tenured HEAT players of the recent era, was a pleasure to interact with and cover for the previous seven seasons. For as much credit as Miami’s vaunted player development program has earned over the years, it should be said that the program can ultimately only act as a guideline. It’s the players who walk the path and put in the work, and Robinson not only hit the grindstone but seized the opportunity ahead of him in quickly proving himself to be one of the best shooters in league history when you consider the volume at which he operated. On top of that, when he did lose his rotation spot after a slump in the 2022-23 season, he bounced back for an incredible postseason run and returned the next year an even better, more dynamic player. Robinson’s journey was nothing short of incredible – including his status as the fastest player to just about any multiple of 100 threes you can think of – and will be remembered fondly by anyone who was around it.

Miami is also losing an elite movement shooter in the deal. Robinson has been one of the most reliable sources of gravity on the court for the HEAT for years, the mere threat of his shooting twisting and manipulating defenses to Miami’s advantage. This was especially true in his two-man actions with Bam Adebayo, one of the deadliest combinations in the league.

Good thing, then, that Miami is also bringing back some shooting. From Detroit they get Simone Fontecchio, a 6-foot-8 forward who can space the floor, and from the LA Clippers they have acquired Norm Powell in exchange for Kevin Love and Kyle Anderson.

Like Robinson, Powell is one of the best shooters in the league, particularly from the corners. The similarities don’t go too far past that, though Powell also had good dribble handoff chemistry with Ivica Zubac (1.18 points per in that combination, No. 5 among the 47 combination with at least 100 actions) that very well could translate to his future work with Adebayo and Kel’el Ware.

Otherwise, however, Powell is an athletic play finisher, capable of finishing efficiently at the rim and with touch in the mid-range. He can run a pick-and-roll, especially second-side actions, but where he truly excels is attacking closeouts, No. 8 in the league in closeout situations (1.29 ppp according to GeniusIQ) among the 180 players with at least 300 situations used. If you can get Powell the ball with the defense rotating, he can either shoot it off the catch or, if the closeout is on point, attack the tilted defense off the bounce.

In other words, what Powell can do fits with any system, any lineup. Shooting does that, sure, but being able to do something with the ball when a defense is doing its job – the postseason will always bring with it better and more disciplined defenses – helps translate the skillset to just about any situation. Powell has been a starter and a sixth man, so Erik Spoelstra will have plenty of options with how to deploy the newcomer.

Altogether, Miami brought back Davion Mitchell – he had a career-best stretch with Miami and gives them what they need on both ends of the floor – and returned Powell and Fontecchio with Robinson, Love and Anderson outgoing. Mitchell’s defense will be key, especially in stabilizing the backcourt defense, but ensuring there is enough shooting on the roster even without Robinson also makes life easier for all the youngsters that could be in the rotation this season. Nothing facilitates development quite like space.

Want to see the theory of Kasparas Jakucionis? Here you go.

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Notebook 95: Kas Skip Pass

Just minutes into Jakucionis’ first Summer League game, he made the pass that could unlock the next level for a Miami offense that has needed juice for a few years. This is the pass Miami struggled to make as the Cleveland Cavaliers overloaded the strong side of the floor during last season’s playoffs. This is the pass that will be there more and more as defenses crowd the paint to deter the lob threats of Bam Adebayo and Kel’el Ware.

Was it Jakucionis’ best pass? Hardly. He’s thrown skips to the weakside with far more zip and accuracy. This one was merely a teaser during a game possibly filled with some nerves, with teammates he barely knows.

But it remains the pass that can change entire games. Nikola Jokic. Luka Doncic. LeBron James. They’re all genius-level passers. We’re not going to pretend Jakucionis is on that level, nor that he will be early in his career. We simply mention their names because part of their brilliance is being able to punish teams no matter what coverage they throw out. With hybrid-zone principles as popular as they have ever been in the league, those coverages often involve leaving the weakside open in order to load up on the most immediate threats. Playmakers who can read the second level of the defense and throw those passes cross-court immediately trigger rotations, opening up weakside players for threes and opportunities to attack closeouts while the defense scrambles. Throw enough of those passes, the defense might adjust, and then the middle of the floor opens up.

Yes, we’re saying all that after seeing Jakucionis throw a handful of high-level passes, but this was the theory of him before Summer League even started. If the theory turns into reality, Miami’s offense could be on the verge of transformation in the next couple of seasons.

Of course there’s more to it than just the passing. You have to be able to stay on the court, and we know Erik Spoelstra has defensive standards. Defense may not be in the headlines when Jakucionis was drafted, but he’s opened some eyes already with his work on that end.

“I was really impressed with how he moved his feet on defense,” Pelle Larsson said. “I haven’t seen him play defense but all the highlights you see of him are on offense so I was impressed with him.”

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Notebook 95: Kas Defense

“His defense,” Glass said on what he’s liked of Jakucionis’ game so far. “His pressure, he’s into the ball, he’s playing physical, he’s doing a lot of the stuff we want defensively.”

The offense overall has been slow going through the first couple of games, with Glass saying that the team needs to find ways to help Jakucionis on that end. If you look at Jakucionis’ college game logs he had a bit of a slow start in his first five games before scoring over 20 in six straight after a nine-point showing, and looking at his journey overall its been nothing but adjustment after adjustment. Learning the league as a guard is a steep curve, as we’ll no doubt remind you multiple times this year, but Miami’s rookie has also shown an ability in the past to figure things out and get rolling.

In the meantime, the theory of how he can impact the HEAT’s offense is still right there. The shooting, the scoring, the defense all matters, but it’s the passing that could truly change things.

Summer League can be tough for someone like Kel’el Ware. Not tough as in they might struggle, but tough as in it’s not always obvious where the steps forward will come from. Some players are simply too good for Summer League, the ones who drop an easy 30 in their first game and bow out for the rest of the slate having made it exceedingly clear the environment wasn’t going to offer what the next stage of their developmental process requires. Others, like Ware, are simply so much bigger and more athletic than the average Summer League competition they won’t be physically challenged, and the games don’t offer the technical nuance that would help them the most.

In other words, Ware can use reps – seeing advanced defensive schemes, adapting to elite level creators – and these are the reps available, but it’s tough to tailor these reps to exactly what he could use the most.

With that in mind, Eric Glass said these games aren’t about developing any one thing for Ware.

“We’re just looking for him to dominate,” Glass said. “There’s so many little different categories that you can pinpoint. We’re not going to dump it into the post for him 10 times, but we’re just looking for him to dominate. When you’re protecting the rim, dominate, when you’re going for every rebound, dominate, there’s no one click button for it all, it’s just dominate.”

Nobody has dominated the airspace around the rim like Ware in these early games. His teammates clearly understand that there’s nobody else on the floor that can high-point a lob like Ware can, and they’re giving him plenty of opportunities to get off the ground.

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Notebook 95: Ware Lobs SF

As with Jakucionis the offense has been a little up and down. The team’s first game lacked fluidity and with both Pelle Larsson and Keshad Johnson out for the second contest the ball pressure from the Los Angeles Lakers helped cause 23 turnovers. It hasn’t been an ideal offensive environment for anyone, at least not yet, but it’s still about finding ways to dominate for Ware.

“There are flashes but we’d like to see it more consistently,” Glass said.

Pelle Larsson is a role player. He said he was a role player when he was drafted, and Erik Spoelstra called him a role player soon after that.

And the thing about being a role player is sometimes the role changes.

With the main team Larsson will likely be some version of a 3-and-D player, a shooter who adds to your defense. From that archetype players can branch out in many different directions – Larsson has some downhill oomph to his game that others simply don’t have – but generally they fill in alongside the high-usage stars and complement them with their own strengths.

In Summer League, however, Larsson gets the chance to be a bit of a star himself. While he didn’t play in the second game Larsson led the team in scoring with 18 points on 12 shots, including 11 attempts at the free-throw line, as he was clearly put in position to create offense.

“Anywhere you can get these live reps where you’re making a lot of decisions and you’re the primary decision maker in pick-and-rolls and actions I think is an invaluable experience for him,” Glass said. “I thought he did good, there’s some good teaching points for him off the game, we have to keep him on his feet, he hit the ground 10 times today, but I think it’s pretty important for his growth.”

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Notebook 95: Pelle ISO And1

It won’t be his role come October, but Summer League is for exploring your game just as much as it is refining, and you never know where chances like this can take a player. Max Strus was a role player, too, but he came out of a Summer League has a high-usage player with the ability to create some offense in a pinch, and that sure came in handy during the 2023 Finals run.

Larsson doesn’t have to be more to be great at what Miami will ask of him, but more is always better.

“Just trying to be efficient everytime I get it,” Larsson said. “Realizing I’m probably not going to be high usage but even if my usage is up here I can try to do the same things I do in the NBA, be ready to catch-and-shoot whenever and when I have the opportunity to drive, get to the line and finish.

-Bryson Warren, a 6-foot-3 guard, put up 18 points on 5-of-10 shooting in Miami’s loss to the Lakers as he shared ballhandling duties with Jakucionis. Even though Warren spent time with the Sioux Falls Skyforce he’s still one of the youngest players on the Summer League roster. He’s a name to watch.

-Warren also told us that he played on the same team as Ware in North Little Rock, Arkansas, during Warren’s freshman year.

-It’s been pretty clear through the initial practices and first two games that Keshad Johnson has taken it upon himself to be a leader for this group. It’s been very common to see him offering advice and encouragement to other guys who are new to Miami’s system.

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Coup’s Notebook Vol. 95: A Summer Of HEAT Moves, Davion Mitchell And Norm Powell, Summer League For Kasparas Jakucionis, Kel’el Ware And Pelle Larsson

The Miami HEAT are 36-44, No. 10 in the Eastern Conference with an Offensive Rating of 112, Defensive Rating of 112.1 and the No. 16 Net Rating in the league. With the regular season coming to a close and Play-In Tournament seeding still up for grabs, here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing, especially when it comes to Miami’s awards candidates.

It’s been a bit of a funky year on defense for Bam Adebayo.

By and large, he’s still been every year as good individually – we’ll get to that in a moment – as he’s always been in a career that sets the bar atmospherically high on the defensive end. The HEAT, tied for No. 9 in Defensive Rating, remain an elite defense whenever Adebayo is on the floor, though his On/Off numbers aren’t as wild as they have been in the past thanks to the emergence of Kel’el Ware.

As Miami has been less and less equipped to play Adebayo’s best pick-and-roll coverage, the switch, he’s still been primarily in drop coverage and even zone trying to plug as many holes as possible. Every outright plus defender on Miami’s roster has hardly been in the rotation all season. Davion Mitchell didn’t arrive until the trade deadline. Haywood Highsmith’s minutes have been up and down all year. Dru Smith suffered a season-ending injury in December. Kel’el Ware didn’t see his minutes climb until January. Andrew Wiggins has only played in 15 games. Jimmy Butler was traded.

Erik Spoelstra and Adebayo offer such a high floor on defensive that it’s all held together, but there’s no denying that it’s been a patchwork effort, the rotation constantly in flux in a quest to find consistency. Adebayo’s defensive numbers – points allowed per possession in a variety of actions – are all very good but they lack the eye-popping quality typically required to build a Defensive Player of the Year narrative around.

Except in one area, always Adebayo’s expertise.

Of the 94 players who have defended at least 100 isolations this season, Adebayo ranks No. 2 in allowing just 0.69 points per to ballhandlers, leading all big men by a sizeable margin.

What’s more, Adebayo is building an argument as the best one-on-one defender of his generation. Since he was drafted in 2017, Adebayo ranks anywhere from No. 1 to No. 5 in isolation defense depending how high or low you set your filters for isolations defended.

But since Adebayo became a full-time starter in 2019-20 – six full seasons with only one stretch of any significance of missed game when he was out a month with a hand injury – he leads all 169 players who have defended at least 400 isolations, allowing just 0.79 points per. In those six years, Adebayo has defended 1,020 isolations.

Past performance doesn’t factor in for this season, nor should it. Adebayo has spent too much of the season holding Miami’s defense together like Spider-Man trying to stop a runaway subway train for his numbers to earn him a serious look at the main trophy. But as the league’s premier Guard Your Yard defender, part of an incredibly small club of players that offenses avoid as much as humanely possible, who is ahead of all leading defensive candidates in minutes played (2,617) outside of OG Anunoby, it should all be enough to continue his five-year streak of making an All-Defensive Team.

We have spent much of the season discussing the changes that Tyler Herro made to his approach this season, that story chronicled in a feature here, and we made the case for him to be voted Most Improved Player last week over on YouTube. We don’t need to belabor either point, though as one final note on the season he’s turned it he has increased his rate of setting off-ball screens since the trade deadline, a period in which teams have been far more aggressive in pressuring him beyond the arc and taking away his threes, while he’s also setting ball screens more frequently than at any point since his rookie season.

In other words, for all the adjustments Herro made coming into this season he’s also found ways to counter the updated scouting report on him. He’s improved, he’s adapted, beyond the initial improvement.

What we do want to talk about instead is where Herro sits in the awards conversation. For years there has been some consternation in media circles about the Most Improved Player award going to a young player making the leap that young players make. Tyrese Maxey won it in his fourth year. Ja Morant won it in his third year. Brandon Ingram won it in his fourth year, first season on a new team in New Orleans. Pascal Siakam was in his third season. Giannis Antetokounmpo was in his fourth season, CJ McCollum his third, Jimmy Butler his fourth and Paul George his third. Even Kevin Love back in 2010-11 was in his third season, as was Aaron Brooks the year before. The other odds-on favorites this year are all in their third or fourth years.

The exceptions in between those years are mostly players who wound up on new teams, with new opportunity in front of them. Lauri Markkanen, Victor Oladipo had each been traded. Ryan Anderson won it in his fourth season, on his second team. Julius Randle didn’t win it until his seventh season, though that was his third team. Almost two decades ago Hedo Turkoglu won it in his seventh season as well, also his third team.

You keep going back and it’s all players in their first four seasons, following the typical developmental curve, or guys starting fresh with a new franchise. The original winner of the award, Alvin Robertson in 1986, was a second-year player. As was Miami’s Rony Seikaly when he won it in 1990.

Herro is a unique candidate, then, in his sixth season on the same team that drafted him where he’s been a fixture in the rotation since his rookie year and a full-time starter for the past three since winning Sixth Man of the Year. The team around him didn’t change – the Butler trade happened well after Herro’s adjustments were already apparent – nor did his minutes or usage. Herro had every reason to continue to be the same guy he’s always been. Instead, he bought in to what Erik Spoelstra started talking about two years back and became an entirely new player.

That’s exactly the sort of story many voters – in writing or on podcasts – have said is more in the spirit of the award. Whether that’s enough to win, we don’t know, but he deserves a long look.

There is little doubt that Kel’el Ware has been one of the best rookies in the league when he’s played.

Since January 1, Ware is fifth among all rookies in scoring, fifth in field-goal percentage, first in rebounding and tied for first in double doubles. He’s no on-paper tiger, either, all his advanced metrics – fourth in estimated plus-minus, second in Defensive LEBRON, second in win shares per 48 minutes – grading out exceptionally well for a first-year player. Erik Spoelstra has kept his role fairly simple, expanding it bit by bit as the season has moved along, yet he also hasn’t spent every minute sitting in the dunker spot waiting for a lob. Instead he’s been an active participant in the offense, not just setting screens but running dribble handoffs, not just rolling to the rim but making snappy plays for others. It’s never perfect for rookies, but when you’re only being judged among your peers nobody is expecting close to perfect.

The main knock on Ware, then, when it comes to rookie awards, is that he really wasn’t playing much until after Christmas. We’ll push back on the idea that if Spoelstra had played him since the start of the season he’d been in better shape because that assumes the same production when Ware had plenty of learning to do behind the scenes to earn his way on the court. It’s easy to try and say he would have done of the same thing all year when the reality is the way he was developed leading into his rotation minutes likely set him up to produce the way he did the fast few months.

Ware also isn’t too far out of the minutes conversation, either. He’s well behind the rookie guards who have all topped 2,000, but he’s also played 24 more minutes than Zach Edey and about 100 more than Donovan Clingan. At 22.1 minutes per game, he’s ninth among rookies, third among rookies playing roles on teams that will at least the Play-In Tournament, just behind Jaylen Wells and Zaccharie Risacher.

It would be nothing short of a surprise for Ware to miss out on an All-Rookie team. There really isn’t anything else to it.

Davion Mitchell has been exactly what Miami needed when they needed it most. When Dru Smith went down with his injury the HEAT found themselves lacking in on-ball options against guards and their pick-and-roll defense suffered as a result.

Then the Butler trade happened and the HEAT managed to pick up one of the best on-ball defenders in the league. Of the 116 players who have defended at least 500 pick-and-rolls on the ball this season, Mitchell ranks No. 3, allowing 0.88 points per. That number includes assists, however, and if you factor those out and filter down to the 102 players who have defended at least 200 pick-and-rolls used by a ballhandler – to shoot, turn it over or draw a foul – Mitchell is No. 2, allowing 0.75 points per.

You want someone who can work their way around a screen – or draw an offensive foul in the process – and stop another ballhandler in their tracks with his chest, Mitchell has been one of the league’s best.

Those numbers include his time in Toronto, but there hasn’t much, if any, falloff since the trade. The combination of Mitchell and Ware, for instance, has allowed just 0.68 points per in pick-and-rolls this season – the best defensive pick-and-roll combination in the league since the trade deadline. The sample size is just over 100, but elite numbers are elite numbers.

The question is whether Mitchell has a pathway toward an All-Defensive team himself, and that’s where it gets a little murky. The last time a player made All-Defense after being traded mid-season was Metta World Peace, then Ron Artest, back in 2005-06 went he went from the Indiana Pacers to the Sacramento Kings and finished fourth in Defensive Player of the Year voting. Theo Ratliff did it a couple years before that, finishing the 2004 season in Portland – part of the Rasheed Wallace trade – with one of the most ridiculous three-month stretches of defense you’ll ever see a center have. And Dikembe Mutombo famously won Defensive Player of the Year in 2001 despite a midseason move from Atlanta to Philadelphia. Eddie Jones in 1999 is the only other player to accomplish the feat, making that four in the history of the All-Defense teams to do so after wearing two different jerseys.

Could Mitchell be the fifth? It might be a tough road, but those pick-and-roll numbers stand out as much as any you’ll see on defense this year.

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Coup’s Notebook Vol. 94: End Of Season Awards Cases For Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware and Davion Mitchell

The Miami HEAT are 29-38, No. 9 in the Eastern Conference with an Offensive Rating of 111.1, Defensive Rating of 112.6 and Net Rating of -1.5, No. 18 in the league. As they work to end a seven-game losing streak, here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.

Outside of the many, many highlight dunks, one of the smaller, yet noticeable, things Kel’el Ware has done has been to consistently get off the ball quickly. When he’s not catching a lob or going for a putback dunk, he’s been decisive, taking the occasional three as teams leave him open but otherwise keeping the offense flowing from one side to another, from one action to the next.

Watch him here and how quickly he transitions from the catch to finding the next opportunity for a handoff.

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Notebook 93: Ware Quick Handoffs

We’re not going to proclaim Ware the best handoff player in the league by any means, no rookie would come close to that designation, but there is value to being quick with the ball, especially for an offense that can occasionally get bogged down on its own. As long as Ware is to be paired with Bam Adebayo, keeping the moment-to-moment pace as snappy as possible will be necessary to mitigate the inherent spacing issues Miami has experienced with those lineups.

There’s also a way we can show how well Ware keeps things moving. Of the 63 centers with at least 200 touches this season, here are the bottom time when it comes to average touch length, in seconds:

A few lob threats in there, of course, which naturally brings down touch time, but you’ve also got a player in Horford who receives the occasional post-up against a mismatch.

Now, on the flip side of things, here are the five centers with the highest touch time in the league:

It’s not surprising that Adebayo ranks highly, given his role as a playmaker in the offense, but that he’s above even Jokic, Embiid and Sengun, all players who spend a lot of time in the post, but that he’s so far above everyone else is worth a raised eyebrow. The offense needs Adebayo to create for others, either as a screener or working the handoff, but as we’ve noted earlier this season the more time Adebayo is working for others the less time anyone else is working to set him up.

There were a couple of interesting quotes last week after Miami lost to Chicago. First, Erik Spoelstra called that game a “regression” which certainly stood out, but later when asked about how the Bulls’ decision to switch to zone affected the team in the fourth quarter.

“We haven’t had that for a while where our missed shots affected our resolve and commitment defensively. I hadn’t really felt that for a while. Those were some of the things that were troubling us six weeks ago.”

This was something that came up often earlier in the season, the defense being affected by the offense, but had stabilized somewhat in the months preceding the Bulls game, when Adebayo said, “it felt like old habits crept in.” It’s also something we can put numbers do, specifically how Miami defends depending on what happened in their own offensive possession.

Heat Defensive Points Allowed Per Possession

If you put the missed shot and live turnover results together, that’s 1.21 ppp allowed in those situations, which means that the difference between defensive possessions which begin with a made shot versus those that begin with a miss or a live turnover – we’re excluding free-throws and out-out-bounds situations here – is about 12 points per 100 possessions, the sixth highest differential in the league.This plays a big part in many of the leads Miami has given up in fourth quarters, as their offense gets stuck in a rut it can lead to their defense getting worse. If you’re wondering about the feedback loop going the other way, how the offense is affected by the defense, the difference in possession start types there is significant but closer to six points per 100 possessions, about half the difference the possible offensive outcomes have on their own defense.

If Miami’s recent loss to Boston looked different, yet familiar, to you but you couldn’t quite put your finger on why, your eyes weren’t lying to you. It wasn’t that Erik Spoelstra moved Davion Mitchell and Kel’el Ware to the bench in favor of Duncan Robinson and Jaime Jaquez Jr.

It was that the HEAT switched more pick-and-rolls in that game than in any game over the past three seasons.

If you keep up with this notebook you’re well versed in the HEAT’s transition to using mostly drop coverage after leading the league in switches during the 2021-22 season, their best defensive season in recent memory. As the roster changed around Adebayo, the HEAT simply didn’t have the personnel to sustain a switch-heavy diet, so they went to more conservative looks while maintaining their use of zone.

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Coup’s Notebook Vol. 93: The Quick Touch Of Kel’el Ware, Miami’s Defensive Feedback Loop, Glimpsing An Old Scheme Against Boston, Jaquez Jr. Encounters The Scout and Duncan Robinson’s Slice Of History